GREGOR GAIDA _ WIDERHALL

Since 2010, the sculpture’s figurative pieces have been
developing an extreme autonomy in which the tension is no
longer generated by the object and (lack of) context, but
rather is drawn from the object itself. Whilst the
Dornenauszieher (Boy with Thorn) with its art history
reference to Gustav Eberlein may mark this border, the
approach is revealed in its entirety in the work Canes Major
I–III (2014). The mirrored, prism-like openings which
permeate the organic dogs’ bodies retain the tension between
the poles of image and reproduction, abstraction and
reference. The mirrors oscillate in their perception between
withdrawing, inward-facing reflective surfaces and a
dominant, yet seemingly materialless physicality. This
tension-charged principle is taken to the extreme in the
group of works with polygonal structures including Swog and
Elementarz from 2013. All these works are made up of a
figurative, unique single form which is “con-figured” into a
closed whole either by means of serial arrangement,
duplication or mirroring with point symmetry. It is not the
narration here which becomes twisted but the form itself. In
doing this, Gregor Gaida draws on the structural principle of
the arabesque where “artificially arranged confusion” of the
nature-like, apparently random form takes on a new whole.

As Friedrich Schlegel describes, this is the start of all poetry,
the way and rules for repealing rationality and reason and
returning to the beautiful confusion of fantasy, to the original
chaos of human nature. Text: Dr. Yvette Deseyve